Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 April 20

= April 20 =

what we're using for a tablecloth
Please let me know the meaning of 'what we're using for a tablecloth' in the following passage.114.176.246.236 (talk) 02:59, 20 April 2014 (UTC)yumiko "My wife's not going to believe me this," Stuart murmured half under his breath. And the aloud, "What are you writing at the moment, Danny? I mean besides what we're using for a   tablecloth."---Erich Segal, The Class, p.277


 * Not sure from that sentence. A tablecloth is exactly what it sounds like, it's a cloth covering for a table, usually used to protect the wood finish from damage.  It appears that Stuart has noticed that Danny is writing about the tablecloth they are using.  -- Jayron  32  03:05, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I take it to mean he's writing on something at the moment which is on the table and getting food spilled on it, much as a tablecloth would. Presumably the paragraph before that one would have explained it. StuRat (talk) 03:08, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Did Segal really write "not going to believe me this"? --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  03:09, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

'My wife's not going to believe this,' Stuart murmured half under his breath. And then aloud, 'What are you writing at the moment, Danny? I mean besides what we're using for a tablecloth.'"
 * Unusual, but I've heard similar phrasing before. "Believe you this" gives me 60M Ghits. StuRat (talk) 03:13, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The actual text (with the previous paragraph) is:
 * "'Stuart,' Danny answered with a smile, 'you publish regularly in the New Yorker. That's my favorite airplane reading. So I don't think I've ever missed a poem you've had in there.'


 * But the broader implication about the 'tablecloth' seems to be that some of Danny's recent writing is presently on the table they're at.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 05:36, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * To me, it implies that Stuart is insulting Danny, implying he is being published in low-quality publications only good enough to be used as substitute tablecloths. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:48, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * This is rather interesting because at my initial reading I assumed (perhaps because I'm British) that Danny was being ironic sarcastic, that they had a regular tablecloth in front of them, but he was sympathetically going along with Stuart's misguided assumption that the tablecloth was something for him to write on.--Shantavira|feed me 09:05, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 'What are you writing?' (content) is quite different to 'What are you writing on?' (medium). Clarityfiend may be correct, but it's not directly evident from the single page available on Google Books.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 11:29, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * From the context (I can see the whole page at Google Books), Danny is a composer of music, working away at a composition while waiting at the restaurant for Stuart to show up. A little before the passage quoted above, one can read "Danny waved him [i.e., Stuart] over to a corner booth, its table covered with yards of music paper". So StuRat's and Jeffro77's interpretations are most nearly correct. Deor (talk) 14:59, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Instead of anything about the corner booth or the music paper, I get "Some pages are omitted from this book preview". :( Maybe there's different amounts available from Google Books based on country. But at least I was right based on the extract it showed me.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 00:03, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are different amounts available from Google Books based on country. Wikipedians and Wiktionarians in the U.S. can often see much more on Google Books than I can here in Germany. Angr (talk) 09:39, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Hypernyms and hyponyms
I have a question concerning terminology: "apple" and "pear" are hyponyms of "fruit", "fruit" is a hyperonym of f.e. "apple" and "pear". But how is the relationship between "apple" and "pear" called? They are not synonyms. 84.28.19.18 (talk) 09:36, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * "Coordinate" (as in "coordinate terms")? ---Sluzzelin talk  15:15, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Evidently that is the phrase in WordNet. But I suspect it was invented for that purpose: I have never encountered in general use, or thought that there might be a word for that relationship. --ColinFine (talk) 23:58, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * "Co-hyponyms" according to a chart in this book on semantics. OttawaAC (talk) 01:36, 21 April 2014 (UTC)